


calm as a storm

by Laylah



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Background Unhealthy Relationships, Caliginous Romance, Fight Sex, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:38:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I don't hate you for your blood," you say. You show her all your individually cast and socketed fangs. "I would think you were trash no matter what color you bled."</p><p>The swipe of her telekinesis comes quickly enough to sweep you off your feet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	calm as a storm

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jadebloods](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadebloods/gifts).



You are #100499, only one in a series. You and your sisters are nearly identical, and you know the degree of your imperfe%ions precisely. The last of your series completed was #100523, a minute improvement over #100521 but not noticeably different from #100522. You are in danger of becoming obsolete. Your creator can only engage so many of you at once, after all.

Since you are less in demand than the more recent models, you have taken to exploring the dream bubbles without your creator. Sometimes you learn from the experience. Sometimes it gives you a chance to destroy something.

You often welcome chances to destroy something.

This bubble is the memory of a temple, vines and crumbling stone, Alternia's moons dimming the stars overhead. The colors are deep and vivid, and your sensors register a temperature for the air: sometimes in a dream bubble that information is simply absent, irrelevant to the mind of the dreamer. You climb the temple steps, observing, seeking. The temple is still and quiet, brown stone and green vines. No animals lurk here.

The flicker of red at the temple's peak captures your attention immediately. Your sensors hone in on the disturbance and your rage subroutine activates. It's her.

You reach the peak of the temple and her eyes narrow as she catches sight of you. "You again," Aradia says.

"I have never encountered you," you correct her. You note the distaste in her voice. It provides feedback for your rage subroutine and activates a number of other emotional programs as well.

Aradia grimaces. "Is he following me?"

"I don't know," you say. "I don't care."

Her focus changes then. She is actually paying attention to you instead of expecting you to merely herald something else. "What are you doing here, then?"

Your processor speed allows you to evaluate a number of possible answers quickly enough to make conversation seem natural. Your currently running emotional routines select among your choices. "I don't owe you any answers."

Aradia's eyes narrow. "If it weren't for me, you wouldn't exist."

You arrange your e%quisitely e%pressive face into a sneer. "If I owe that much to you, perhaps you'd like to tell me how much I owe _him_?"

You thought she would lash out at you for that. Instead she flinches, and all of your programming _sings_ with the certainty that you have just achieved a victory. "I shouldn't have said that," she says.

"That's why you don't want to see us, isn't it?" you ask. Organic trolls are so stupid about interacting with each other. "You look at us and see him. He looks at us and sees you."

She flinches again. "I haven't been fair to you," she says.

You sort through responses again. It isn't satisfying, having her apologize and offer you kindness. You don't want that. "I don't see why he's trying so hard to replicate you, when you're such trash."

Oh, much better. Her eyes narrow and her thin wings flutter in agitation behind her. "Don't tell me you're going to spout that spectrum crap at me," Aradia says. Again you feel the delight of having produced a correct answer.

"I don't hate you for your blood," you say. You show her all your individually cast and socketed fangs. "I would think you were trash no matter what color you bled."

The swipe of her telekinesis comes quickly enough to sweep you off your feet, knocking you down the stairs. Your thrusters engage and you stop your descent thirty percent of the way down, rocketing back up to meet her. You throw a punch, which she deflects with another telekinetic shove.

"Don't make me take you apart, little doll," she says, and the snapping chill of her tone is just what you wanted.

"Am I supposed to be frightened?" you ask.

"You can't kill me," she points out, flexing her wings again.

"No," you say. You know that much. "But I can make you hurt."

Despite the warning, you're fast enough to punch her once before she can stop you. She's flying backward from the force of your strike, bloody-mouthed, and you take the first step to follow. Then time flickers around you, jagged enough to disrupt your sensors, and when you recover your bearings she's already there, kicking you in the chassis. 

You go flying, flipping heels over head, engaging thrusters at your heels to stop you once you're upright. Aradia is licking the blood from her lip. Some stray part of your programming hums a contradictory set of signals at the dark red color.

She plants her feet in a fighting stance that you recognize. it's a style you've assimilated. "All right," she says. "Is this what we're doing here?" She bends her knees, stabilizing her stance further, and raises her open hands in an aggressive, threatening block. "Come on."

You attack again. Aradia moves to meet you, blocking, striking, pushing you back. You know you have the power to fracture bone, to wrench limbs from their sockets, to ruin an opponent made of flesh and blood. Your frame is built for strength. You have been programmed to know how to fight. 

But Aradia is quicker than any unassisted organic could be, and she never takes your strikes straight on. You slide off her telekinesis, lose your balance in the wake of her evasions. Despite your inability to destroy her, your rage is transforming not into an overriding alarm but rather activating _other_ imperatives, things you have not been called on to do since the activation of #100517.

You change tactics and try to grapple rather than pummel. She isn't expecting it, and you catch her arm before she figures it out. She tries to twist away, but your grip doesn't have the same stress point as an organic's wrist should. You catch her by the hair with your other hand. She bares her teeth and you can feel pressure changing in the air, the threat of a deadlier application of her telekinesis.

You kiss her.

She growls, her hands at your throat, where you would have a severe weakness were you organic. You recognize the intended threat and categorize it as positive feedback. When you use your leverage and superior weight to bring you both to the ground, she uses her telekinesis to cushion the landing. Your shielding slides back and your bulge activates. 

Aradia immobilizes you when you try to reach up under her robe. "That's what you want? To fill someone?"

It's what you do, when these imperatives take precedence. "Are you stopping me?"

"It's not what you'd want if you were me," she says. "And you're supposed to be, aren't you?" She flips you over and pins you on your back, kneeling above you, her weight balanced on her hand against your shoulder. Most of the force she's exerting doesn't come from her body at all. "Just how much anatomical detail do you have here?"

"I am complete," you say. Your bulge lashes against your lower abdomen.

For an instant Aradia looks like she is going to tell you you're incorrect, but she closes her mouth again without speaking. She reaches down to your unshielded genital apparatus, drags a quick line down your bulge, then sinks her fingers into the silicone of your nook.

"If you were me, then at the end of a pitch fight like that you'd want something inside you," she says, the threat growl still in her voice. Her fingers work inside you, a rhythmic pressure that provides unfamiliar but appealing stimulus. "Getting a little attention for your bulge would be nice, but definitely secondary." Your bulge curls against her wrist as she refines her attack enough to make your chassis tremble. "But that's not how his fantasy goes, is it? So _this_ ," her fingers twist viciously, "isn't the first thing you try to claim for yourself."

You note that she has released her telekinetic hold: only her hands and her slight weight pin you now. You thrust with your hips to match the rhythm of her hand. "Continue."

Aradia nods. Her expression is still a fighter's. "I'm going to." There is a stiff, hidden sensor cluster inside your nook that produces nothing but pleasure feedback. From the familiar way Aradia finds it and applies friction, you conclude it must mimic organic structures closely. "Do you climax?"

"Please clarify the question," you say.

She snarls in what sounds like honest fury, and her power presses you down against the floor again. You attempt to voice a demand that she explain herself, but the feedback loop from her fingers inside you is occupying an increasing amount of your processor and parallel functions are beginning to lag. Your diagnostics aren't reporting any malfunctions, though; no alarms activate. Instead you hold still, allowing the feedback to build, to crowd out the rest of your inputs, until everything you experience is the crackling repeat of _yes yes yes yes_

and static

and

.

..

...

.......

Your systems hum quietly, performing diagnostics as you boot up. You suffered an unexpected shutdown, but it does not appear to have caused any corruption. You survey your surroundings. You are in a dream bubble. You are alone. 

You review your history from just prior to your system crash.

It appears that what Aradia did to you was not helpful for your uninterrupted functioning. And yet there is a significant chance that you would permit it to happen again, especially in a situation in which rebooting would not place you in danger. You would do it for no other reason than to have that particular form of feedback override you. It's a strange, irrational impulse, but there it is. You will have to network with the rest of your series when you are in range. 

You want to share your discovery with them.

**Author's Note:**

> Filled by desire  
> I'm calm as a storm  
> Like a state of mind  
> It's someone you know   
> \-- Icon of Coil, "Former Self"


End file.
